Flexible Tablet Prototype Is Electronic Paper

If a prototype tablet PC that debuted at this month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas ever gets produced in volume and becomes the next big thing in portable consumer computing, we'll be back to laying out sheets of paper on a desk. Except a lot of data will be stored in each sheet, and the sheets will be communicating with one another.

The PaperTab flexible tablet splits a tablet's windows into separate sheets of electronic paper. Developed at the Human Media Lab of Canada's Queen's University in collaboration with Plastic Logic and Intel Labs, the conceptual device should probably be called PaperWindow, since each sheet serves as an app window.

The device runs on the Intel Core i5 processor and is based on flexible plastic transistor technology and 10.7-inch display touchscreen technology developed by Plastic Logic, a company known for its research in plastic transistors and flexible displays. (We've discussed this company before.)

The PaperTab flexible tablet PC splits a tablet's windows into separate sheets of user-editable electronic paper that store a lot of data and communicate with one another.(Source: Human Media Lab, Queen's University)

Instead of cramming separate windows on to a single small display, the PaperTab system spreads them out on a physical desk. In a video demonstrating the conceptual device, the displays appear to plug into a box under the desk. Users can have 10 or more "interactive displays," or one per app in active use, that communicate with each other and transmit data through an undefined medium. The idea is to make it easier to work with multiple documents and multiple apps.

The process is similar to opening a window on a regular tablet or notebook PC. When the user picks up a PaperTab, it switches to a full-screen page view. Moving it farther away makes it revert to a thumbnail overview of a document, and when it's beyond reaching distance, it displays icons. Users can navigate through multiple pages within a single PaperTab document by bending one side of the display: one side for forward, the other for backward. Users can also place two or more PaperTabs next to each other to form a larger drawing or display surface, edit its contents, or enter data.

The video shows someone using two PaperTab: one blank and one showing PDF icons. The user hits an icon on one PaperTab with the blank PaperTab to open a particular document. To open an email, the user hits the email inbox on one PaperTab with an empty PaperTab, which is then bent to open a reply window. The user writes on the reply window with a touchscreen keyboard. The user can also create a larger view of a drawing by placing two PaperTabs side by side and then dragging an image from one to the other.

DBrunermer, as we mentioned in the story, it's not clear how data is being transferred between one window and another. Since we can't see under the table, it's possible that there's some kind of hub where all the cables go where they communicate with each other, or it's possible there's some kind of wireless communication, possibly facilitated by electromagnetic tracking.

I agree it looks interesting, but I disagree on the company's definition of 'Intuitive'. Bending a page backward to flip pages is not really obvious, nor is folding / dog-earing for fast forward and reverse on video. But I digress.

The movie makes it seem like the desk is an important part of this invention. As in, it's the desk that knows where the pages are in relation to each other, not the paper itself. To me, that's a huge limitation. That's not portable, even a little bit. I think instead they should make an electronic binding, like a regular book, with all interconnects in the 'spline', and the CPUs/WiFi in the front or back 'cover'. It could probably be as think as two kindles, and then be useful and portable. But this is an interesting device, all in all.

In other words. The advantage of this system is about the same as having a tablet screen that is 3 feet by 4 feet (roughly the size of a desktop). Honestly, I think I would prefer the latter. Especially if I could roll it up and take it with me.

The advantages are being able to lay out documents on a table, as we can do when they're made of paper, instead of having to look at everything sequentially on one screen. I have often wished to be able to do this, especially with long technical documents. Anyone who writes or does hands-on editing of such documents--words or drawings--could appreciate this, as could an R&D team that collaborates on same.

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